Easter Concerts

With Greek Orthodox Holy Week just around the corner, the CySO offers us a concert full of pain and passion. The first work, Rudolph Barshai’s transcription for string orchestra of Shostakovich’s String Quartet no. 8, which the composer wrote in just three days in July 1960, shortly after being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. A work which the composer himself considered his epitaph. The programme continues with anguish at the death of Asa, Peer Gynt’s mother, but also with a threnody in contemporary Latvian composer Peteris Vasks’ “Musica Dolorosa”. Last but not least, Haydn’s “Passion” symphony, a name not coined by the composer himself but rather given following a performance of it in the German city of Schwerin during Holy Week of 1790. And, as musicologist H. C. Robbins Landon notes, a work “dark-hued, somber – even tragic.”

D. Shostakovich: Chamber symphony op. 110a
E. Grieg: Peer Gynt Suite no. 1, op. 46: II. Ase’s death
P. Vasks: Musica dolorosa for strings (Cyprus premiere)
J. Haydn: Symphony no. 49 in F minor (“The Passion”)

Conductor: Jens Georg Bachmann

Ticket prices: €12, €7 (18-26 yrs, pensioners), €5 (under 18)